Center News and Notes

Farm irrigation turns Arizona area from an affordable rural valley into a waterless wonderland; what’s in store for the Endangered Species Act? Wild horses on the Navajo reservation disrupted by climate change; some of best environmental reads this month.

“Wielding acronyms in conversation makes it easy to speak quickly,” says Maggie Wood, an intern at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), but it’s “nearly impossible for outsiders to enter the conversation.” Fortunately, she got up to speed ASAP.

Summer is almost always a time of transition at Stanford. With commencement behind us, we’d like to take stock of some significant comings and goings in the Bill Lane Center for the American West community.

California’s Department of Water Resources "cannot deliver water to your local water suppliers without energy, and quite a lot of it," writes Barrett Travis. His job at the state agency this summer is to help model the feasibility of proposed hydropower projects.

When only 18% of Americans today say they can trust the government to do what is right, says the intern Hannah Zimmerman, the NCSL "can work to decrease the divide between elected officials and their districts."

Desalination – the conversion of saltwater to freshwater – has been limited by high operational costs. A new device capable of turning desalination waste into commercially valuable chemicals could make the process cheaper and more environmentally friendly.